The present invention relates generally to computing systems, and more particularly to computing systems that use a windowing operating system for displaying information on a graphical user interface (“GUI”).
When using a windowing operating system (such as that provided by the Microsoft Windows® operating system), users often desire to switch among various ones of the displayed windows. (“Windows” is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.) In one approach, the user may switch to a particular window by pressing the left mouse button when a representation of the mouse cursor (such as a pointing arrow) is positioned over some portion of that window. In another approach, the user may press a key combination, such as ALT plus TAB in the Windows operating system, to cycle among the active windows (i.e., the windows of the currently-executing applications; hereinafter, the term “active window” refers to a window from a currently-executing application). In the Windows operating system, pressing this key combination causes the operating system to display a small window with an iconic representation displayed therein for each of the active windows. Graphical highlighting within this window indicates which window is currently targeted to have the focus. Once this small window is displayed, the user can cycle among the currently-active windows by continuing to press the TAB key while the ALT key remains depressed. The graphical highlighting changes, responsive to the TAB key, and when the user has reached the active window of interest, releasing the ALT and TAB keys causes that window to receive the focus and to therefore move to the foreground of the GUI display (and the small window also disappears).
See FIG. 1, where a sample version of a small window 150 is depicted on a GUI 100. This sample window 150 is representative of a window that may be displayed, in the prior art, responsive to pressing ALT-TAB (that is, a combination of the ALT and TAB keys). In this sample window 150, iconic representations 151, 152, 153 are displayed therein for three currently-active windows 110, 120, 130, and graphical highlighting (shown, for ease of illustration, as a dashed rectangular box) at 152 indicates that window “B” 120 is currently targeted to have the focus (and window 120 is shown, in this example, in the foreground of window 100, where it overlaps windows 110 and 130). Rectangular text box 154 indicates, in this example, a name “Window B” that is associated with the window which is graphically highlighted. If the user presses the TAB key again while the ALT key remains depressed, the graphical highlighting will move to 153 (indicating that window “C” 130 will receive the focus, and will therefore move to the foreground of the GUI display 100, if the keys are released); if the TAB key is pressed another time while the ALT key remains depressed, the graphical highlighting will move to 151 (indicating that window “A” 110 will receive the focus, and will therefore move to the foreground of the GUI display 100, if the keys are released).